Sambulo Ndlovu

Great Zimbabwe University · african languages and literature

Linguistic and cultural anxieties have characterized the Ndebele language and culture due to the various hegemonies the people have gone through. The Ndebele as a nation were born out of the Mfecane migrations. In their migration up north they encountered various linguo-cultural groups that posed the risk of possible linguistic and cultural attriti...

This chapter deploys Afrocentric reasoning to the problem of poverty in Africa. It argues that colonially motivated renaming of some elements of sustenance within African culture in Zimbabwe is partly responsible for the poverty experienced today. Names which pathologise African culture created poverty, and the continued perceptions of African cult...

Sociolinguistic research has established that age is a factor in language variation and ultimately language change. Youthful manipulation of language creates vernacular which results in the phenomena of youth languages and registers. The youth languages are similar to slang creation and usage because they are both lexicalised through manipulating l...

Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) have been used by the Ndebele to record their history, to control human behaviour, to manage natural resources and for production and one such IKS is the name and naming system. This paper evaluates the conservation effect of names of pools along the Gweru River in the Silobela district of Zimbabwe. Names especial...

The language question is topical in Africa because of colonial hegemonies by colonial and languages of global communication such as English, French, and Portuguese. English hegemony in dominant domains fosters the coloniality of language in liberated territories such as Zimbabwe. Part of the decolonising agenda in Africa was to rename the public sp...

Ndebele is a difficult concept to clearly define because it includes many sub-ethnicities that are united by history and marginalization. The founders of the Ndebele state created a centralized government in what is now called Zimbabwe and they can be credited with organizing the nation that was soon after colonized. Some figures linked to Ndebele...

Analysing data from literature, observations, interviews, media and discussions using the theories of Othering and Feminist Political Economy, this chapter demonstrates that the custom of lobola among the Ndebele, from its inception, has always othered women although the abuse of women in its traditional practice was less than today. The lobola cus...

Language is part of a people's culture and as part of culture language is used to record people's trajectories through out history. Some elements of language are used to preserve history and form part of the linguistic history of the language speakers. Linguistic landscaping is the language of public spaces and amongst these are; public names, hodo...

Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in Africa have for a long time been undermined by western science and this has resulted in the global community losing out on essential knowledge and survival skills embodied in indigenous cultures. Some elements of African cultures such as the Ndebele joyina games are even viewed as illicit and played by naughty...

This paper investigates the ethnophaulisms that are based on the transphonologisation of ethnonyms and toponyms between the Ndebele and the Shona. The intention is to identify and analyse toponyms and ethnonyms that undergo the process of transphonologisation and obtain people's attitudes towards the transphonologised names. The assumption is that...

In the context of this paper, child development is upbringing, incorporating the care, education and protection of children. The traditional Ndebele way of child upbringing ensures that the child develops responsibly and especially out of danger. This paper thus seeks to identify the gap between modernity and Ndebele taboos and suggests possible so...

Zulu spoken in South Africa and Northern Ndebele spoken in Zimbabwe are Nguni languages that are particularly close to each other, Zulu is arguably closer to Zimbabwean Ndebele compared to other Nguni languages. It can be argued that one is a dialect of the other but migrations have separated the language groups creating two different languages in...

Youth varieties in Africa such as S’ncamtho, the Ndebele-based youth variety in Zimbabwe, and urban vernaculars interact with urban and modern experiences which offer them new materials and experiences to base their metaphors on compared to older metaphors in the base languages. This paper explores the use of numeral qualities and associations in t...

The name Bulawayo in Zimbabwe today denotes the second-largest urban centre founded by Lobengula, the second and last of the Ndebele kings who was dethroned by white settlers. The name is Ndebele for one who is killed. The meaning of the toponym and its etymology carry nuances of suffering and dying. This paper adopts Nominative Determinism which i...

S'ncamtho is an urban youth variety which uses Zimbabwean Ndebele as its matrix language. The youth language has had influences on the Ndebele language over time. This article argues that Ndebele benefits from S'ncamtho, its urban youth variety in terms of vocabulary although efforts at linguistic purism often moderate this contribution. The articl...

Bulawayo as a transport network-based urban settlement has been a conglomeration of cultures since it became an urban centre. Bulawayo urbanites have always spoken urban isiNdebele, which is a vernacular with a youth and urban bias. The isiNdebele-based urban youth language is generally called isiTsotsi (criminal code), just like Tsotsitaal in Sout...

This article focuses on the characterisation of S’ncamtho toponyms in Bulawayo and it goes on to measure the impact of these toponyms on the population of Bulawayo dwellers. S’ncamtho is an urban youth variety that is built on urbanity and streetwise style. The study assumes that, as S’ncamtho is the language of the youth in Bulawayo, people are ex...

This paper sets out to discuss how the Shona and Ndebele people of Zimbabwe make use of animal imagery to refer to human behaviour and habits in various situations. In this context, animal traits are drawn from both domestic and wild animals. A discussion of such a conception of human behaviour shall demonstrate that although animalisation largely...

Izichothozo are insults used in gaming that can be identified as part of the ‘prohibited’ Ndebele folklore. This verbal art form is a form of folk humour popular with Ndebele youth. However, adults also play the game. The game is considered obscene by many people, at least in public, but most people may be playing it, especially using non-obscene t...

This article explored the influence of automobiles on gender relations in present day Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean cultures may be different but as African cultures they share much when it comes to their world views on gender. The advent of the automobile has changed gender relations in Zimbabwe by introducing new gender roles based on the automobile wheth...

Ndebele language and culture have lived under the English influence for many years. The influence of English has seen the introduction of foreign elements into Ndebele culture. The Ndebele language did not use the inter-dental fricative phoneme be it voiceless or voiced before contact with English. Ndebele orthography that was developed by missiona...

Tshivenda and Xichangana, like other minority languages in Zimbabwe, are only taught up to Grade 3 of elementary education in areas where they are spoken. Chishona and isiNdebele are the only indigenous languages that are taught as subjects up to university level, either through the medium of English or through their own medium (as at Great Zimbabw...

This article seeks to analyse the philosophical and structural aspects behind retro naming in isiNdebele. Retronymy becomes part of derivational morphology because nouns are derived by combining different parts of speech. This process is a major contributor to isiNdebele lexical expansion. The process enables the language to accommodate new concept...